My (complete) letter to The New Statesman on Grammar Schools

This is the full text of a letter I wrote to the 'New Statesman' a few days ago.

 

'Tim Wigmore, in “Grammar schools fail poor pupils” (13 December), looks at the operation of a few vestigial grammar schools in the Home Counties, vastly over-subscribed because they are besieged by well-off commuters. Then he assumes that a national selective system would work in the same unfair way.  It wouldn’t. It doesn’t. It didn’t. Selection helps the children of the poor.

 

In Northern Ireland, which retains grammar schools, the proportion of young full-time first-degree entrants to Higher Education institutions, from socio-economic class 4 to 7, is 39.1%, compared with 30.9% in largely comprehensive England, 29.1% in wholly comprehensive Wales and 26.6% in totally comprehensive Scotland (source: Higher Education Statistics Agency,  2011/2012). In short,  children from the less-favoured social classes have a substantially better chance of qualifying for university entrance under a selective system.  

 

In 1966, the Franks Report into Oxford University showed that, during the selective era which began in 1944, the proportion of state and direct-grant pupils entering Oxford rose rapidly. Such schools had won 32% of places in 1938-9. By 1958-9, they won 45% (Direct Grants 15%, ordinary grammars 30%) and by 1965-5 they won 49% (Direct Grants 17%, ordinary grammars 34%) . These improvements were achieved without any special concessions, and despite the private schools’ inbuilt advantage in Classics, then essential for Oxbridge entry.

 

Peter Hitchens'

 

 

It doesn't seem very long to me, but not all of it appeared (the sections in bold were missing) . I accept that journals have the right to cut letters, and acknowledge that none of the other letters published were any longer, and thatnd the NS devotes one page to readers' correspondence. I'm just sad that this should be so, in a major journal of opinion. The trouble is that people so often accuse me of having no evidence for my positions. Evidence takes up space.

 

 

 

'